Happy Centres
by wingedwish
Summary: Zim plants a couple of "happy probes" in Dib's brain and controls his happiness levels. But what does the rest of the universe think of this 'evil' plan?
1. Happy

_Disclaimer:These characters belong to Jhonen Vasquez and not me. I've just got a story to tell._

--

HAPPY CENTRES

"Here let me get the door for you," Dib says, his ears lifting with his smile. Zim strides past him and hunches his shoulders as if deeply embarassed. Dib follows him into the classroom.

"Today's gonna be exciting, I can feel it!" Dib exclaims as he hikes up his backpack. He turns to Zim who is slowly slipping into his desk, when finally Zim looks up.

"Go away, go away go away!," Zim screeches at Dib while flailing his body parts in different directions. Dib runs to his desk. He swings into his chair and plops onto his bum, bouncing happily.

"I love the world!"

Dib grabs the air around him and hugs it fondly.

On the other side of the room Zim whispers into a little radio while hiding his face from the rest of the class. "Gir, listen, turn the big dial left! Left, left, left!"

Zim's mouth hangs open as he watches Dib's forehead begins to sizzle and smoke.

"You're turning it right, Gir! I want it left!" Zim shrieks and shakes the radio like a stubborn mustard bottle. The tension in the classroom rises steadily as the skoolkids shimmy around, relatively freaked out. Dib is now screaming as if he's on the rollercoaster ride of his life, when suddenly the smoke and screaming vanishes.

"I like life," Dib says with a calm smile, hands clasped together. A little rainbow might very well paint itself over his head. Dib's anti-climactic calmness leaves the built up tension to poise in the air for a moment before everyone finally lets go of their breath to relax and regain normalcy (the word 'normalcy' being relative of course!). Zim quickly tucks the little radio under his collar with relief.

"Zim, if you're going to yell angrily, do it outside of class," warns Miss Bitter, as if deciding that nothing else that had happened in the past two minutes was worth mentioning.

"Ah," Zim quips as he straightens his uniform, "I will yell no more."

Miss Bitters gives an annoyed grunt and grabs a chewed up piece of chalk to begin class.

--

Dib trots home after school. He is happy. The metal rooftops reflect the sun and blind him. That makes him happy. The sound of his boots landing on the pavement makes him smile. The sight of Gaz waiting for something at the door makes him laugh heartedly. Menial things all around him, no matter what, uplift him.

Dib approaches Gaz and puts a flower in her hair. It's a daisy that he'd picked up on his walk. Something inside him screams a warning, but he feels too happy with the world to take it seriously.

"It matches your eyelashes," he says while walking past her to get inside. The punch pulverizes his stomach, his body seizes and sends him staggering, immobilized with agony. He trips into the kitchen where his Dad is installing some super-enhanced megawatt light bulbs that are just fresh from his lab.

"It's quite spectacular. These bulbs hold enough energy to cause a nuclear explosion if not handled exactly right. I think they'll light this room quite nicely." He tightens the last bulb with a squeak from his glossy rubber gloves and nods approvingly. Dib turns the light-switch on and the room instantly blasts with radiance brighter than the sun. Him and his Dad duck out of the kitchen and close the door behind them.

"Yeah! Who's the Membrane!?" Shouts his Dad while punching the air with a "take that!" followthrough.

"Wow Dad! That's amazing!" Dib pants as his frightened heart thumps against his chest. "It was like the sun was exploding in my face! What a feat!"

He squints his eyes enthusiastically and opens them widely, trying to blink away the yellow splotches behind his eyeballs.

"Son, when my experiments succeed, I am happy, for science makes me happy. In your case, unless you are about to claim that the intense light has unveiled some illusionistic otherworldly vision to you, it would be unnatural for you to be as excited about this as I am, which it seems you are." Professor Membrane deducts. He takes out some tweezers and plucks a hair from Dib's head. "I'll just do some tests to make sure you're...still in working order." He seems to force a chuckle as he swings the lab door shut behind him.

Dib's smile drops for a second and becomes much like his regualr self again.

_Dad's right_, Dib contemplates, _It's not like I got any sort of paranormal enlightenment out of almost being blinded! Why am I so excited about a nuclear lightbulb anyways? Maybe-_

Suddenly his these thoughts are cut short by an imposing blast of happy-go-lucky-ness that spreads through his brain and softens every nerve and feeling in his body. A smile spreads from ear to ear and he ponders on how good life is. What was that I was questioning about life again? Absolutely nothing! Carry on then.

--

GIR, I feel strangely good, like a good thing," Zim confides to his robot, sincerely awed. He picks at a screw thats starting to come loose in the table. GIR watches the screw intently.

"I am good for enhancing the happy centres of Dib's brain yes? Now he loves his pitiful life."

"You gonna put another thingy thrugh his head?" GIR asks. His voice rises with every word.

"No, the 'happiness probes' that I drilled through Dib's forehead last night seem to be enough for now. As long as you don't let those happy levels go critical, GIR." Zim starts tugging at the screw more assertively, "Never let him get that hideously cheerful again. Not now, anyways"

Zim jumps off his chair and rides an elevator to a new room that he's been constructing for the past month, careful to step over the skinny pipes that are rearing and twisting around madly. All of them rise from the centre of the room. There, a steel tower reaches to the ceiling; the tip harvests sparks of blue light that pulse through a canopy of wires. After each pulse of light the room lapses into darkness.

Zim peeks at the tower's controls. His newest evil plan. It all began with the help of his recent test subject, Nick, with whom he reworked the idea of Nick's 'happiness enhancer' to devise a set of smaller probes that could be implanted inconspicuously.(Nick even helped design the probes by painting smiley faces on the ball-shaped peices).

And now, with every shot of sparks from the elusive tower, a flight of supersonic happiness stimulates the probes in Dib's brain. Zim quivers with excited anxiety. The forces of the mind are under his control. Not even the humans have harnessed such an accomplishment. He puts his hand on a big dial that rests midway between two emotional extremes, one labelled 'normal Dib levels', and the other labelled 'certain cheerful doom'.

Blue light flashes across Zim's face, then the sparks subside once more. In this moment of darkness he twists the dial two clicks towards 'cheerful doom' and scampers out of the room.

"I make the Dib smile because my master plan commands it, and not because I actually want him to feel good. That's right, so be gone icky feelings of pitiful human kindness that corrupt my wrathful blood! This is not for him, this is for me!" Zim chastises his feelings. "You'll see."


	2. Meeting my Maker

_Disclaimer: these characters belong to Jhonen Vasquez and not me. _

_You know what, I just realized that this story is vaguely like the unmade episode Return of Keef. Ah well. You know what else? I love playing up the fact that Miss Bitters is like totally a supernatural creepy thing._

--

"Dib, there is no school today. "

"Ah Miss Bitters, I was just polishing your hideous earthworm infested apple," Dib replies as he chucks a handful of larvae into the trash and shines the surface of the apple in rhythm with his happy whistling.

"Nobody polishes my apple," Miss Bitters says slowly.

She presses a bony hand on his face and lashes her tongue through his ear so that it comes out the other side. Her clothes begin to billow and a deep sound seems to be coming from nowhere. She slinks back ward to let the deep sound sift through every particle of his being. His body jerks and twitches, and then he tips forehead first, crashing between Miss Bitters' feet.

The happy-probes in his brain shudder and crack and he gets up with a jaunty leap.

"Hey! I feel normal again!" His eyes bulge suddenly, "SO MUCH ANGER AND HATRED BOTTLED UP WITHIN! MUST RELEASE!"

"Dib, there's something drilled into your head. Go see the nurse." Miss Bitters commands.

Dib shuts his eyes and shakes his fist, no doubt about to say something very VERY angrily, but before he knows it, consuming happiness enslaves his brain once again as the probes reconnect.

His eyes pop open.

"Hey Miss Bitters, did you just stick your tongue in my ear and blast my body with ghastly waves of deep sound? Haha, you better lay it low before you're next on my list for paranormal inspection!" He says jokingly, "Of course, that will be after I speak to Zim about this whole brain drilling thing. No doubt he did it. Perhaps I'll buy milkshakes, yeah..." He ponders, leaving Miss Bitters to pucker bitterly as he heads out the door.

_Okay, What!?_ His deep thoughts roar angrily. _Milkshakes? Seriously what did Zim do to you?! I want to pulverize that slimy creature is what I want. Come on!_

Dib stops abruptly, the tails of his jacket still swinging. These angry feelings surge and snatch at his consciousness and for a moment they fight the unholy surges of happiness, making Dib tremble with his eyes wide and ferocious.

"Zim! Man am I gonna, g-gonna-"

He screws up his face and jerks it from side to side as if he's having an internal tug-of-war trying to spit out the next words.

"-get you."

Dib crosses the empty hall and skips down the steps to the outdoors, waving to the singing robins. "But before I get him a milkshake I should ask what his favourite kind is." He grins as if it is the most brilliant idea since circuit grease.

--

"You know, GIR, I don't think anybody takes doom seriously anymore. I need a word that will shock my enemies with greater doomy fear!"

"Doomy?"

Zim sighs pitifully.

"You're right GIR, what could possibly be more amazing than my already ingenious vocabulary?

GIR gnaws on the bottom lip of his doggy disguise while galloping in front of a meandering Zim who's lost in thought. They begin to pass the school when suddenly Dib bursts from the front doors, waving at the birds in the trees and kicking up his heels.

"I hate to see the Dib so sickeningly jolly." Zim hisses as he ducks behind the fence to avoid being seen. Unfortunately he fails to grab GIR, who runs up to Dib and starts dancing.

"You all smiley! Wanna dance with me?" GIR says while bouncing up and down with Dib's hands.

"Zim's evil minion! Is Zim anywhere nearby? I want to talk to him about something." Dib asks while bouncing with the robot. GIR stops and looks to where Zim is crouched behind the fence. GIR frowns at him like a disaproving parent and gestures for him to come over at once. Zim growls.

"Here I am Dib!" Zim bellows and jumps out from his hiding place," Just so you know, your happiness would be nothing without me! It's all part of my evil plan, mark my words!" Zim cries. "I hate that putrid smile on your face so don't get used to it!" Zim makes a 'I'm ripping your face off' gesture with his hands.

Dib's insides leap with rage._ Zim doesn't get that I'm pretty much dying here. He doesn't know how infuriating it is to be happy ALL the TIME!_

But amid what he's feeling on the inside, his brain tells him to say something a little different.

"I think I get where you're coming from, yeah, " Dib says thoughtfully, "Have fun with your evil plan I guess. Me, I'm buying milkshakes! What's your favourite flavour anyways?"

"The taste of doom, Dib. The taste of doom." He narrows his eyes as if warning Dib not to take that word lightly.

"Sounds good to me!" Dib turns to head down the street to the ice cream stand. Once Dib is gone Zim begins to stalk in the opposite direction when suddenly he stops, one leg poised in mid-walk. GIR pushes it down like a lever and Zim bends forward, his head level with GIR's.

"I think it's time for the evil plan to show its true colours," Zim spits into his robots face. He leaps up and shakes a pointy finger to the sky. "I know what I must do! And It's going to be really neat and nasty! Come GIR the master plan waits!"

He grabs the shoulders of GIR's costume and blasts back to the base at top speed, leaving a burnt pit to simmer on the pavement.


	3. The Fall

_Disclaimer: these characters belong to Jhonen Vasquz and not me. I've just got a story to tell._

_--_

The last student dashes into class just as Miss Bitters pulls the door shut. It squeaks eerily until a dead click locks them in. Everything seems deafly quiet until a quick, soft thumping sound catches some students' attention. They turn to Zim. Something inside him beats rapidly, like a heart on adrenalin. He leans forward anxiously, excitedly, peering out the door's window.

Suddenly a pale faced Poonchy plants his face into the glass and pounds on the door from the outside. Then he disappears.

A thick glob of yellow saliva splats across the window and an ominous black shadow seems to swallow the entire hall. Everyone screams crazily. Zim jerks out of his desk and dashes to where Dib is seated.

"Dib! I know what that thing is! The fate of mankind will surely be NOT GOOD AT ALL if you don't do something with your incredible knowledge of outerspacy things!" Zim collapses on Dib's desk and pleads with his hands while quivering desperately. Dib blinks.

"Hurry Diiiiiiib," Zim deflates into a moaning figure trembling under Dib's seat. Dib is beaming brightly; actually his expression has been the same since about midday the day before. Long creases are etched into his cheeks and forehead from smiling for so long.

_THUNK! _

The walls shudder.

_THUNK!_

Hundreds of cracks split from ceiling to floor. The chalkboard slips and snaps in half, the fluorescent lights wheeze and flicker. A final thunderous bang sends the room crashing into a mess of rubble and dust. All the students cower under their desks to escape the flying bits of room, all except Dib. Dib sits motionless in his seat with electric wires and ceiling caught in his hair. Both eyes are on a gigantic monster that fills half the classroom with its enormous belly. Just visible above its round body is a gummy lump of a head with, what seems to be, a beeping chunk of technology wrapped around its neck.

"I am the dull-witted Guh-Shquiggle Spluch!" It says in a sick squelchy voice. With every word, a waterfall of yellow saliva pours from its mouth and runs down its belly, glooping onto the floor. "I am so hungry that I used my precious belly as a battering ram to get to the special prize inside!"

It scoops up the students that are closest to it and swallows them whole.

Dib feels a hard pang in his heart. _A horrible monster! Zim has gone way too far this time! I've got to do something!_

"Hahaha!" Dib laughs while pointing at the creature wildly. He reaches for his notebook and begins to jot down notes when his laughter starts up even stronger than before and his pen slips and slides over the paper.

"I-can't-write!" His pen drops as his limbs become jelly under all the happiness. It falls under the chair and bounces off of Zim's head.

" Gir! Turn it farther! I want him even happier!" Zim whisper yells under his collar. Back at the base GIR obeys his master's command, spinning the dial playfully. The sparks become more like lightning and Dib's skull throbs with replenished exhileration.

"Monsters are real?! Dib was right all along!" Melvin screams as he runs to join Zim under Dib's desk, which is farthest from the Guh-Shquiggle Spluch. Soon everyone left is cramped around Dib, trying to yank him out of his careless-blubbery stupor. However, it seems that the more furious the normal Dib would be in this situation, the more insanely giddy the new Dib becomes.

"Come on Dib! We believe you all right! I'm sorry I said you were a nutball and whatever, just come on and stop that thing from eating us!" Zita shakes his shoulders like a maniac. Meanwhile, some kids try to climb over the broken walls to escape, but the attempt is pitiful. They can see the clouds swimmig lazily above their heads but the jagged tops of the walls still tower above their reach.

"Hey guys!" Dib waves at them. He clambers on top of his desk and invites someone to take his chair. "It feels like a good day for baking cookies!"

Zim kicks rubble at Dib's face.

"What's wrong with you?" Zim barks. "We who are about to be eaten by the alien monster are being laughed at by the self-proclaimed PROTECTOR OF EARTH!"

Dib begins to shake uncontrollably and his eyes begin to water. His real feelings struggle against the blasts of happiness once more and he begins to drone insanely, "I don't know what's wrong, I don't know, I don't know why I feel good, everything is good. "

Then, for the final time, his inner feelings collapse under a tsunami of happiness. Dib is completely won over.

"Zim is right! He doesn't care about us."

The skoolkids yell and wail as the monster lumbers closer, all of them abandoning Dib and trying desperately to either climb the wall or run past the monster to get to the door. The monster chuckles amusedly as they squeal and run around like dumfounded mice.

Zim turns away from them to revel in his genius.

"Dib will be served doom by the dumbest monster in the world will remember him as the one who couldn't save himself from the thick headed slobbery-drool monster!" Zim chuckles maliciously. "I am bad, yes?"

He takes out a control device and dashes behind a boulder- shaped chunk of wall. He presses a button in the middle of the device and suddenly the monster jolts up from its amusement and shrieks, spitting madly. Electricity sparks from its collar and it thrashes around in anger, knocking over whatever is left of the walls. Melvin and Zita and all the other skoolkids cheer and leap toward the gaps in the wall for freedom. The monster lunges after them when Zim presses the button again.

"Over here you oversized beast!" Zim yells. "It's the Dib you want!"

Furious blood shot eyes lock with round watery ones and Dib slips off his desk with a thrilled gasp. The monster crushes the desk under its body and snatches Dib between two claws, trying to hold onto a writhing, wriggling meal that is howling with laughter. Just as the monster parts its large slimy lips and buffets Dib with its raunchy breath, Dib stops laughing.

"Your breath smells like my Dad's socks...heheheh, _snort!_ HAHAHAHA!" Dib seizes up in uncontrollable giggles and kicks wildly as the happy vibes shake through his whole body.

The Guh-Shquiggle Spluch begins to chuckle at its happy meal and gurgles, "I know, little morsel, my Dad's Shigiwigi smell like a Shlooga's dingleshluck!"

Zim stamps on his technology and crushes it to bits."Okay! How am I SUPPOSED to feel evil with you laughing at your very demise!? HOW!?"

Dib and the monster continue to laugh like it's a riot.

Zim hisses at their ignorance, "That's fine! I thought bringing a monster here to eat you would be really neat and stuff, but I think I'll take the pleasure in destroying you myself now! Try some CERTAIN CHEERFUL DOOM !"

He rips a radio out from under his collar and yells, "Turn it all the way GIR!"

The Guh-Shquiggle Spluch drops Dib in fright as his forehead begins to smoke and he screams the rollercoaster ride scream, an excited and rising wail. Dib plummets and bounces off the monster's giant belly while his wail rises to a painfully high-pitched scream. At the exact moment he lands back in the rubble an echoing bang silences the air.

Zim edges toward the still, black mound. He slowly peeks over the nest of debris the surrounds the fallen figure, when his radio rings unceremoniously. He yanks it out.

"GIR! What is it?"

But the voice is not GIR's.

"Invader Zim, a supervisor has just informed us that you are granting your enemies excessive happiness. The mission code has been breached. We have terminated your position. Please wait while our fleet come to drag you off the face of the planet."

"What? But I am done with that now! I am evil! I AM ZIM!"

Zim stares wide-eyed at the figure on his radio, a savage looking Irken who's silhouetted against the Massive's control chair.


	4. What is Left

Zim stares at the radio until the other Irken gets bored and cuts the transmission.

"Why that ugly little pig-head, telling me what I can and can't do, face of the planet junk-talk, nobody is gonna take my mission," Zim grumbles. He cuts himself short when in front of him a dark figure begins to peel itself from off the floor. A mangy head rises with retted hair and black bruises under its sunken eyes, a dripping glower pulling the face down.

"AAUUUUUGGHHHH!!" Zim yells and turns to run when a hand snatches the front of his uniform. The other hand grabs the roots of a scythe shaped protrusion of hair and yanks it from its scalp. Zim tries to pull away from his captor but freezes when the black scythe is raised above his head.

Beside them the Guh-Shquiggle Spluch lurches in surprise as the scythe slashes across its own belly and the kids it had swallowed before tumble out of the gash, covered in whatever you want to imagine. They splutter and try to regain their balance, and then Dib snaps his fingers at them and points them out of the room.

"Wait! Dib is crazy! Help me!" Zim yells as they dash out of the room only too willingly. The Guh-Shquiggle Spluch gets up and waddles after the retreating kids while spilling belly fluids everywhere. Back in the classroom Zim thrashes around and tries to pry Dib's fingers from his uniform.

"Zim, I want you to pack up and go," Dib growls.

"Well that's fine! It just happens I've go better things to do, the Tallest are coming to take me away to a more worthy planet for ZIM!"

"You got kicked off this mission, didn't you?

Zim yanks himself from Dib's grip with a furious twist.

"You just had to be so cheerful and happy didn't you?" Zim accuses him. "You made me look like I was doing you a favour! Now the Tallest think I'm weak!"

"You brought that upon yourself you slug! You were the one that drilled those dumb probes into my head in the first place! And just so you know, that was no favour; I was practically dying under all that happy garbage you were sending to my brain!"

He takes a deep breath.

"What was the point of the whole happiness thing anyways?" He asks, sounding deeply vandalized.

"Isn't it obvious?" Zim retorts as he himself tries to remember why the plan had sounded so genius in the first place.

"No."

"Then you obviously don't understand the complexity of what goes on in my ingenious head."

Dib breaths in deeply again and steps backward, eyes still locked on Zim. "Then explain this to me, why I can't even remember what it feels like to be happy anymore."

Zim's eyes widen and his mouth opens slightly. "Wait, a reversal? The probes must have backfired and sucked the juices from your happy centres completely."

"All I feel is misery and rage and hate." Dib says ominously. He leans back, then without warning hurdles toward Zim and wrings him around the middle, causing them both to crash into the dirt and dust that clouds around them as they struggle. Dib tears the wig off Zim's crown with his teeth and plunges a hand into his eye-socket. With an arch of his back Zim tosses Dib into the broken chalkboard, hissing and spitting like an animal. Dib groans and rolls over. He throws aside a contact lens that he'd managed to rip out, and clambers back up into a defensive position, facing the half exposed alien.

"Thank you Dib for reaffirming my badness. To know that you were miserable that whole time is just the thing I needed to hear. When the Tallest come you can show them your sad little face and they'll give me my mission back."

Zim snatches his wig off the ground and lodges it back in its place. He crawls up the side of the wall like an insect, and then glances back quickly. He jumps to land on the other side of the wall when something invisible catches him in midair.

"What's going on!?" Zim says in surprise. Dib watches him ascend a tunnel of unearthly light, wriggling and kicking helplessly.

A huge spaceship (sporting the long face of the Irken symbol on its bow) hovers just below the clouds. Dib tilts his head back and notices that the windows are barred; actually the whole ship is ribbed with metal prongs like a metal beast that's been turned inside out. A prison ship?

"Wait! Just look at his unhappy face!" howls Zim. The closer and closer he gets to the ship the faster the abduction beam pulls him in. He tries to grip the rim of the entrance before he gets completely sucked into the ship, but his claws only screech across the metal before the force of the beam yanks him through. The portal snaps shut after attaining its victim. Up until the ship swivels around and rockets into the distance, Dib listens to the coarse yelling of Zim in his defeat. His jacket catches the discharged wind from the takeoff and he uses them to gain some air, jumping up to the spot where Zim had stood moments ago.

"See you later, space menace," Dib says dully. Great, just when he'd be whooping his lungs out for mankind's greatest win ever, Zim had to go and mess up his emotions completely. The creases that had been etched by his excessive smiling now slink across his face and harden around his solid scowl.

Dib knows exactly what he's going to do next.


End file.
